National Planning Commission (NPC) Report: Department of Human Settlements response

Meeting report

Introduction
The Chairperson said that purpose of the meeting was to get a presentation of the Department of Human  Settlements (DHS)'s response to the National Planning Commission Report and 2030 vision. The Department was doing the presentation now because the Committee had had no time to engage it on the diagnostic report last year to get a sense of its view. It hoped that the Department had used some of the to draft its development plan; as such it was expected to touch on the issues raised in the report and how they linked it to the 2020 vision as well as how the Department intended to deal with some of the issues raised. The Committee had expected the Department to present the 4th quarter report which would have assisted it in making preparations for the Budget vote, but the Department had indicated that it had not completed it but would present it next week. The Department was supposed to make a presentation on expenditure progress on national priority projects and the Minister had allocated 80% expenditure of the grant to be spent on projects while the remaining 20% was with the Ministry. The Committee would receive the presentation next week.  The Committee hoped to adopt the strategic plan of the Department and the Committee’ strategic plan report next week. The report would be submitted to the Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports (ATC) and the Committee would have to meet with the Minister to be briefed on his strategic plan as well. Members were urged to put the agendas in their schedules because there was no other date to deal with the issues after next week, because for the 17 May Members would have to prepare their budget speeches.

Discussion
Mr S Mokgalapa (DA) wanted to know how the Committee was going to attend to all the issues in one day.

Ms P Duncan (DA) wanted to know why the Department could not present on the 4th quarter report which was the most important part of the debate preparation enabling the evaluation of the Department's  programmes. The conduct was unacceptable because it was now putting pressure on the Committee.  
The Chairperson asked the Department to give reasons for failing to present the 4th quarter report.
Mr Neville Chainee, DHS Deputy Director-General [Chief Operations Officer], replied that the Department ha the draft report which had preliminary figures and it had 21 days to confer with National Treasury and the provinces to finalise the figures.  The Department still had to verify the statistics before submitting the report.
The Chairperson said the Committee should give the Department a chance to address the matter. She could not understand why the Department was failing to submit the report because latest technologies had made  easy the compilation of information. She urged the Department to compile monthly reconciliations for easy capturing of information at the end of the quarter. The default on the presentation was putting the Committee under pressure because the debate would not be held without it. She added that the Department submitted monthly reports to the National Treasury which could have helped in the compilation of the report.
Ms M Borman (ANC) said the explanation by the Department was not valid and suggested that if the 4th quarter report would be debated next Wednesday it was important that Members receive it on Tuesday to enable Members to scrutinise it.

The Chairperson proposed that the report be emailed to Members tomorrow before 12pm.
Mr Chainee said the report would be submitted but there was need for proper evaluation and verification of the report before being submitted.

National Planning Commission (NPC) Report: Department of Human Settlements response
Mr Chainee said that it was important for the Committee to consider that a substantial amount of work had been done between the Department, National Treasury and the Presidency in respect of the National Development plan which the Committee had received last year. The three had undertaken a process to react proactively to the Diagnostic Report of the National Planning Commission. The NPC had raised five fundamental issues, among them making sustainable human settlements, radically revising the Housing Finance system, development of coherent and inclusive approach to land and revising regulations and the projects implementation process. The presentation focused on the background to the evaluations, overview of the evaluations, progress made and recommendations, and aimed to inform the Committee about human settlements evaluations, about the forthcoming Cabinet presentation and announcement by the President on the evaluations,  as well as for the Committee to note the progress that had been achieved.   The evaluation process was based on the diagnostic report of, among others, the NPC, and it reflected various interactions and identified weaknesses. Over the last 18 years there was a substantial amount of work that had been done and the NPC report represented a consolidation and revision of that. The evaluation process was a framework for monitoring of outcomes, institutional performance monitoring and front-line service delivery monitoring. Also, it allowed for concrete research and evaluation based on what worked and did not work, and what measures and interventions were to be undertaken. In conducting the evaluations it was important that the Department establish whether policies were working or not and find the root cause of impediments. The evaluation process had been approved by the Cabinet 23 November 2011 and a Government evaluation plan for 2012/13 had also been published.

Dr Zoleka Sokopo, DHS Chief Director: Monitoring and Evaluation, presented further on the evaluation process and how the Department sought to address issues that rose in the NPC.
 
Discussion
The Chairperson asked the Department to provide the five areas recommended by the NPC. The Committee needed to understand the diagnostic report first to enable it and the Department to be on the same understanding before dealing with the NDP. A discussion was necessary in order to identify problems and establish ways of responding to them. It was important that the root causes that affected problems be established and the Department was urged to do away with delaying tactics and being defensive.

Ms Borman suggested that the Department give the five recommendations raised in the NPC report so as to give direction to the Committee.

Mr Mokgalapa supported the Chairperson’ sentiments that the presentation was not addressing the agenda but rather it looked like an academic thesis. He asked the Department to provide the five key diagnostic areas adding the Committee should have been dealing with the 4th quarter report rather than wasting time on issues that should have been attended to long back.

The Chairperson said that the Member should not jump to conclusions but agreed that a discussion was necessary on the matter. The report was a public document so the Department was not supposed to hide anything. If Parliament was not given an opportunity to discuss the document it would raise a lot of problems. So the Committee would appreciate if the opportunity could be afforded. The Department was supposed to submit the report to the Committee and then prepare a scientific report in order for it to defend itself and to allow the Committee to make honest recommendations. It was the first time that the Department had failed the Committee and there was need for it to be transparent in its relations. The Committee had told National Treasury that it would not support development of urban areas at the expense of rural areas. She asked the Department to list the points, adding that the discussion would be held because the Committee was yet to produce a report to the Speaker of the National Assembly on the matter. The Committee was the only one that had not submitted a report to the Speaker but it was giving the Department an opportunity to bring a concrete report.

Ms M Njobe (COPE) said that the first part of the presentation did not address the agenda of the meeting but the last part showed some references to it. The report was necessary in enabling the Department to deal with real challenges as well as avoiding repetition because the presentation had not highlighted issues and how they were to be dealt with.
The Chairperson decided that the Department should continue with the presentation but still the NPC issue would be discussed further.

National Planning Commission (NPC) Report: DHS response (continued)
Mr Chainee said the Department had assumed that the report was known because it had been presented to the Committee last year, though he was not sure if the Committee still had the same Members. The conclusions from the report were:

⚫The focus on quantity, particularly in relation to provision of housing and infrastructure had entrenched existing inefficient settlement patterns;
⚫The past and present delivery models resulted in very low urban densities in relation to international benchmarks for efficient and vibrant urban form;
⚫There were inefficiencies in the use of resources such as energy and water; and deficient and poorly coordinated systems of public transport and other infrastructure networks;
⚫There were growing pressures on urban areas on the one hand and weak institutional capacity to  ensure adequate functioning of towns and cities;
⚫The quality and availability of service infrastructure such as water and sanitation for livelihood creation and support had been compromised by the legacy of underinvestment in infrastructure over a long period of time and poor management of resources.

The five points constituted the conclusions the NPC had presented to the Committee and the Department.

Discussion
The Chairperson said that the Department not presented the issue before.

Mr Chainee clarified that the presentation had been done by the NPC.

The Chairperson reiterated that the Department had not presented on the issue itself, and even if the NPC had made the presentation the Department was supposed to present to the Committee as well. It was not possible to discuss issues with the NPC since the Department was charged with resolving them, for example, there was an issue of corruption within the Department which had been raised to all sectors by the NPC.

Mr Chainee replied that Department would reconnect the diagnostic report and chapter 8 of the draft National Development Plan (NDP).

The Chairperson said that chapter 8 should be linked with rural development because the two were interlinked. He apologised for the confusion that had been created.

National Planning Commission (NPC) Report: DHS response (continued)
Mr Chainee said that in terms of six issues presented by the NPC in relation to the draft NDP, the clusters proposed were: the development of national spatial framework, strengthening the spatial planning system, starting a national conversation about cities and towns, supporting rural spatial development, bolder measures to make sustainable human settlements, and building an active citizen. The Department in conjunction with the President and National Treasury had undertaken an evaluation of the six clusters. The Department would send a report to the Committee detailing the link between the diagnostic report, the draft NDP and the Department’ response to the six clusters.

Dr Sokopo said that the evaluations had been conceptualised in conjunction with the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency. Monitoring and evaluation tended to be confused. The framework developed by the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency had been adopted by the Department. The evaluations were important for learning from programmes implemented, accountability, decision making and for knowledge generation. There were various kinds of evaluations that the two Departments had considered. They included input, outcomes, impacts, output and design yet there was a tendency to look at outcome evaluations only. The Department had chosen a combination of evaluations, including impact, implementation, diagnostic study and design. It had chosen to evaluate the implementation of the Urban Settlement Development Grant. However in relation to the Integrated Residential   Development Programme conceptualised in 2006 the Department would evaluate the success of the programme and decide whether it could be used to solve issues of sustainability raised in the Diagnostic Report of the National Planning Commission. The Programme was conceptualised to promote sustainability of human settlements. The Department would evaluate how the programme could change the way cities looked (city morphology) or if it was an extension of the apartheid system as was represented by the Diagnostic Report of the National Planning Commission.  In regard to the Urban Settlements Development Grant (USDG), the questions that the Department would try to answer were:

⚫What were the experiences of provinces and municipalities in implanting the grant; and
⚫To what extent had the USDG through the built Environment Plans found its place within the current programmatic plans. Was the focus only on housing or using the grant to address other issues as well?

The Department and the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency had decided to work on the two evaluations. A memo had been prepared for the evaluations to be presented to Cabinet and in total the Department would present eight evaluations.

Mr Chainee asked the Chairperson if it was necessary to explain the other three evaluations which the Department would be looking at.

Dr Sokopo explained that one of the evaluations looked at informal settlement upgrading. This was a response to the assumption that people’ lives were being changed without making a scientific study. In that regard the aim was to have a situation analysis of the sector and when the upgrading was finished an evaluation of it would be done after a period of ten years, for instance. The other one sought to evaluate access to the city. Before 1994 access to the city was restricted, particularly for the poor; as such the informal settlement spoke to that inability to plan for the poor masses. The evaluation would seek to evaluate whether access to the city was now possible, particularly for the poor. There were a number of programmes that had been implemented to give assets to the people, so the evaluation would seek to establish whether the Department was creating assets and what form of assets were they.  It had found that people were using their Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses as economic assets. Some had been turned into spaza shops so that people could derive income using houses allocated by the Government. Also, there was not much activity regarding financial assets and the Department was trying to create a comprehensive response. The Committee was welcome to make suggestions on other ways of improving evaluation.

The Chairperson maintained that still; the Department was not saying anything about its systems. Despite the fact that Human Settlements Development Grant  (HSDG) was very problematic it had not been addressed in the evaluation. There was no balance as well in the creation of assets government sponsored houses had been sold and the habitants were not the original owners. The biggest challenge was that the houses were sold at give away prices.

Discussion
Ms Duncan said the nation spatial framework referred to in the he Diagnostic Report of the National Planning Commission recommended that the Department look at the national spatial development framework. Was the Department going to link with the framework at the levels of local and provincial government ? She was disappointed that there was no national spatial development framework but appreciated that the Department had indicated that it would address the matter. With regard to rural areas, she asked the Department to define boundaries and characteristics of towns and rural areas.

Mr Chainee replied that an area was rural when it fell in an area in which a communal title was allocated. It was a matter that needed to be discussed with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform.

Ms Duncan emphasised that the strategic planning session with the Department should be held and should be long enough to give Members to time to contribute. Spatial planning went hand in hand with planning and currently most of the land in South Africa had been utilised so much that the remaining state land was very little.  There was need to change resource allocation models to mitigate effects of in-migration.

Ms Borman wanted to know whether the Department was looking at how sustainable was the process of giving free houses which motivated in-migration. Was the Department going to speed up the delivery because the process was taking long and the Department was supposed to include the issue of sanitation?

Dr Sokopo replied that the Department had undertaken a process looking at how best the subsidy could be utilised. The piece of work would be available in June and would inform the Department’ strategy in tackling problems.  

Ms J Sosibo (ANC) said that people were immigrating to cities in the hope that they would be given free houses. What plan was in place to prevent beneficiaries from selling their properties? How was it that some community members had two or three houses when they would get registered once they received a grant from Government.

Mr K Sithole (IFP) was worried that the Department was showing more interest in urban areas than in rural areas in its programmes. The Department was not doing monitoring and evaluation because sanitation was a big problem. He referred to the problems in Eastern Cape, adding that money was available but  infrastructure implementing agencies were not spending.

Dr Sokopo appreciated the suggestion to look more into rural areas adding that the Department had not yet responded to rural issues. There was nothing it was doing on rural development and indigenous technology.  

Mr Mokgalapa said that the document did not speak to the issues raised in the Diagnostic Report of the National Planning Commission. There was no reference to the issue of response to population growth in cities and the Rural Infrastructure Development Grant was supposed to be a key area of focus. This was so because it tried to bridge the gap between rural and urban divide-development could only come to rural areas only if the infrastructure was developed.  He wanted to know which word was more appropriate to use between ownership and assets. People needed to have ownership of property before it could become an asset.

Dr Sokopo said that there was a research document submitted to the Committee looking at the economic impact of the Government housing programme. If the Government had not introduced RDP projects there would have been more disaster than the country was facing. Most people did not know how to trade in the  property market; there was needed for education and, if possible, prices for the sale of the houses should be determined to prevent unsuspecting poor families from being robbed. The other aim was to create vibrancy in the market and make housing contribute to economic development

Mr Chainee said that the Department and the Committee should a strategic planning session to explore some of the issues. The Department had a monitoring and evaluation section that had been monitoring targets but with the new approach the Department wanted to go beyond that. The NPC had made reference to revising the housing finance system, reviewing projects in poor locations and prioritising well-located projects. The Department had already done the process through the introduction of the USDG and the Integrated Residential Development Programme. The question to ask was whether they were making an impact and, if not, why? Part of the USDG grant was to cater for the land acquisition process, promote mixed development and define urban typology. The Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Bill had been introduced in Parliament and the Department was participating in the process. The fact that human settlement was approved in poor locations under poor spatial planning process was causing problems for the Department. The Department intended to interrogate why people were selling their houses after getting subsidies.

The Chairperson said the reason for selling was very clear. Some sold their property because they needed money, some had houses attached due to debt owing (economic circumstances) and there were corrupt members of society who took advantage of the people. How was the Department going to deal with the issue because the grant would not be suspended? The Department had a problem of consumer education and there was need for a joint effort with the Department and all other public representatives to find a logical solution to the problem.

Mr Chainee said that the research would provide some of the suggestions on how to deal with the matter as well as advice on the appropriate police or regulations to implement.

Dr Sokopo said that there was a misconception that a large number of Government-provided houses were being sold yet in actual fact it was only 10% of the beneficiaries who were doing so.

The Chairperson wanted to know the time frame of the research.

Mr Chainee answered that the answer was to be provided by Dr Sokopo. The issue of selling houses needed to be understood and in some circumstances houses were given to people who could not pay taxes and other maintenance costs because they were unemployed. It was not possible that the subsidy be removed because the informal settlements were disadvantaged in many ways.

The Chairperson said that it was necessary that a session be held to deal with some of the outstanding issues that had been raised.

The meeting was adjourned.